Current Schema

This wiki page attempts to document the current schema for the GCD. The public schema consists of four principle data tables as well as several supporting tables. The supporting tables are Countries, Languages (lists of codes for each of those things), Indexers (a list of indexers, but not of full account information) and IndexCredit (maps indexers to series for credit, but there are also credit notes int he series table). The four main tables are described below.

The "Name in New Code" column is for those who might be looking at the new Python/Django implementation. Since the existing table and column names are not even remotely consistent in capitalization, formatting or abbreviation, they were standardized in the Django model classes to make working with them easier (Django provides a convenient name mapping system for exactly this purpose).

Please note that much of the issue and story table information on this page is based on earlier documentation by Peter Croome.

publishers [Publisher class in new site]

DB Column	Name in New Code	Description	Usage Notes
ID	id	DB-generated primary key.	In the lasso-based site, this is the number you see in URLs like http://www.comics.org/publisher_details.lasso?id=4066 It is generated by the database and has no inherent meaning.
PubName	name	Name of the publisher, imprint, or set of imprints	Because imprints are not stored per-issue, in some cases a semicolon-separated list of imprints corresponding to all imprints used for a given series has been given an entry in this table. Also, not all things that we term "Publishers" or "Imprints" strictly fall into those categories, and we do not accurately reflect the evolution of company names over time (for instance, "DC" was not until fairly recently the official name of the company, although it was long an informal name. It is still not exactly correct- "DC Comics" appears to be the current legal name. But "DC" is what everyone knows, so that is what appears in the database).
YearBegan	year_began	Year (by cover date) of first publication.
YearEnded	year_ended	Year (by cover date) of last publication, if any.
CountryID	country	The country from which the publisher operates.	Foreign key into the Countries table.
Notes	notes	Space for arbitrary notes.
web	url	The URL for the publisher's website.	While this column sometimes has data, it does not appear to be used by the Lasso-based site.
AlphaSortCode	alpha_sort_code	A single character.	Appears to be used to sort related publishers near each other even if the more obvious alphabetical sort would not do so. It's a touch unclear.
ImprintCount	imprint_count	Count of how many imprints a given publisher has.	Does not appear to be uniformly accurate.
BookCount	series_count	Count of how many series this publisher publishes.	Does not appear to be uniformly accurate.
IssueCount	issue_count	Total number of issues in all series published by the publisher.	Does not appear to be uniformly accurate.
Master	is_master	Boolean field.	Appears to indicate if something is a publisher or an imprint. Or more generally, a first-class publishing entity or one that is somehow part of a larger entity (because it was bought long ago, or is part of a group of companies commonly referred to by another name, etc). The new site mostly ignores this in favor of checking for rows with a matching parent id.
Connection	connection	No clue. It's a varchar, though. Perhaps it's supposed to explain the nature of each publisher-to-publisher relationship?	Always null or in one case an empty string in the current data dump, so pretty clearly not used.
ParentID	parent	Self-join key for parent/child relationships.	This is how the imprints for a publisher are stored.
NextID	next	Self-join key, purpose unknown.	Does not appear to be in use.
created	created	Row creation timestamp.
Modified	modified	One of two change timestamps.	No idea which one the Lasso site actually uses.
Updated	updated	One of two change timestamps.	No idea which one the Lasso site actually uses.

series [Series class in new site]

DB Column	Name in New Code	Description	Usage Notes
ID	id	DB-generated primary key.	In the lasso-based site, this is the number you see in URLs like http://www.comics.org/series.lasso?seriesid=72 It is generated by the database and has no inherent meaning.
Bk_Name	name	Series title.
Format	format	Physical format of the series (size, color presence or absence, paper stock, etc.).	Since format is really an attribute of the issue rather than the whole series, this field may contain a fairly long description of how the format changed over the life of the series.
Notes	notes	Space for arbitrary notes.
Yr_Began	year_began	First year (by cover date) of publication.
Yr_Ended	year_ended	Last year (by cover date) of publication, if any.
PubDates	publication_dates	First and last full cover publication dates of the series, separated by a '-'. No last date if still ongoing.
Pub_Note	publication_note	Arbitrary publication / publisher-related notes. Some records in the current DB include addresses, imprint information and/or general reprint information here.	Does not appear to be used by the Lasso implementation.
Themes	themes		Does not appear to be used (always NULL).
Issuecount	issue_count	Number of issues associated with the series.	Does not appear to be reliably accurate.
Tracking	tracking_notes	Notes about how a given series is continued in or continued from another series.
Crossref	crossref	Appears to be a boolean field flagging if there is a crossreference.	Does not appear to be used by the Lasso implementation. Only one record where this is not NULL or 0.
CrossrefID	crossref_id	Apparently a self-join key for the cross-referenced series.	Does not appear to be used by the Lasso implementation. Only one record where this is not NULL or 0.
HasGallery	gallery_present	3-character field, but used as boolean.	If true, there is a cover gallery. I think.
Included	gallery_includes	varchar field, seems to be comma-separated list (with hyphens for ranges) of issues included in something? I speculate the gallery, but it's not clear how this is used, if at all, by the current implementation. It is not the string that shows up in the "Issues published:" space on the series page.
Indexers	indexers	Semicolon-separated string of indexers.	This does not appear to be quite what gets displayed in the credits on the page in the Lasso site. The exact relationship between this and the IndexCredit table is unclear.
OpenReserve	open_reserve	Integer field.	Presumably something to do with online indexing, but since reservations are per-issue, it's not clear quite what.
Frst_Iss	first_issue	Issue # (or other identifier) of the first issue in the series.	Note that it's not currently reliably possible to determine this from the issue table.
Last_Iss	last_issue	Issue # (or other identifier) of the last issue in the series, if any.	Note that it's not currently reliably possible to determine this from the issue table.
CounCode	country_code	Inexplicably not a foreign key into the Country table. Instead the country code is duplicated here, and does not necessarily match properly.
LangCode	language_code	Inexplicably not a foreign key into the Languages table. Instead the language code is duplicated here, and does not necessarily match properly.
File	file	Presumably the name of the file used for flat-file indexing. Or possibly distribution.
InitDist	initial_distribution	Presumably something to do with flat-file distribution of the data.
UpdateDist	update_distribution	Presumably something to do with flat-file distribution of the data.
PubID	publisher	Foreign key into the publishers table.
Pub_Name	publisher_name	Copied from publishers table, presumably to save a join.	Reliability of this field has not been verified.
Created	created	Row creation timestamp.
Modified	modified	Date of last row change.
ModTime	modification_time	Time of last row change (24 hour).
LstChang	last_change	Date of some sort, but apparently unused.	Only five non-NULL, non-zero values in the current data, all in the future (nearest is in 2010).
oldID	old_id	Not clear. Presumably the ID from a prior organization of the data?	Does not appear to be in active use currently.
SelfCount	self_count	Absolutely no clue.